Apr. 4, 2010

Sgt. Dave Mutchler the court liaison discussed the process of summoning police officers to court in Jefferson County. Because police officers sometimes don't show up in court the result has been the dismissal of hundreds of serious criminal cases each year._ (By Pam Spaulding, The Courier-Journal)_Feb. 18, 2009 / Pam Spaulding

Written by

Jason Riley and R.G. Dunlop

The Courier-Journal

Despite policies put in place last year to monitor and discipline Louisville Metro Police officers for lax court attendance, hundreds of cases — some involving felonies — were still dismissed because of their absences.

Police officials acknowledge that, until recently, they didn't follow key parts of the department's June 2009 policy that required dismissed cases to be rigorously monitored and analyzed to determine if officers missed court without good reason.

And they concede that the police department's oversight of court attendance and dismissed cases still needs to be improved.

As evidence of the department's struggle to identify problem officers, only four were sanctioned for missing court in 2009, far fewer than the 91 officers disciplined for the same offense by the similarly sized Nashville police department last year.

Louisville strengthened its court-attendance policy last June after The Courier-Journal reported that more than 600 felony and countless misdemeanor cases were dismissed in 2007 alone because officers failed to show up for hearings.

“We were not as successful as we should have been … to ensure that people were going to court,” acknowledged Lt. Col. Vince Robison, speaking about the department's recent performance. “We could have done a better job policing ourselves.”

The department fell short in multiple areas, an analysis by The Courier-Journal found:

Since March 2009, Jefferson County prosecutors have turned over reports to police of more than 1,000 cases where officers failed to appear for court. But the department didn't analyze them to identify problematic officers or dismissed cases.

The sergeant in charge of tracking officers who were subpoenaed for court failed to fully monitor their attendance. At the same time, he was seeking officers' support of his candidacy for president of the police union, creating a potential conflict of interest. He was recently reassigned.

The department still has no comprehensive method to identify dismissed cases. Only recently did it ask the state Administrative Office of the Courts for help.

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Robison, whom Police Chief Robert White recently directed to fix the problems, has instituted changes, including daily court attendance audits and the appointment of a new court liaison. Robison says these have resulted in fewer absent officers and dismissed cases.

In addition, more officers have been disciplined during just the first three months of this year for court attendance-related violations than in the preceding decade.

White declined recently to be interviewed. But Robison acknowledged during two lengthy interviews that there is still room for improvement and that the department will benefit when the cumbersome process of hand-delivered subpoenas is replaced with an electronic one in the coming months.

“We are changing a culture that has been here for … 30, 40 years,” Robison said. “The policy itself was a big step and, I'm not trying to make excuses, we could have done a better job administratively. People say it has gotten better, but it's my responsibility to fix this. I think we can improve a lot more.”

More accountability vowed

After the newspaper's articles on chronic officer absences appeared in March 2009, White issued a memorandum stating that missing court without a valid reason constituted a “very serious violation” of regulations and that officers must attend when properly subpoenaed.

Two months later, the chief introduced the revised policy, which described in detail how court attendance and dismissed cases would be carefully monitored by the department to ferret out continued abuses and to hold officers and their supervisors accountable.

At about the same time, Jefferson County prosecutors decided to keep track of officers' court attendance and the dismissed cases that resulted, agreeing to share the results with police.

But both efforts fell short, the newspaper found.

Prosecutors only diligently kept the records for a few months. And even when prosecutors did provide records, police failed to act on them.

Some of the reports were logged by a police lieutenant into a department computer database, reviewed briefly in the special investigations division and then essentially set aside, Robison said. Others turned over by prosecutors to the department between August and December of last year were misplaced.

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As a result, police didn't heed a prosecutor's warning last May when an officer failed to make a single court appearance in the case of a convicted felon arrested on a half-dozen new charges.

When the officer failed to come to court for a fifth time, a month later, the case against defendant Stepfon Monroe was dismissed.

“By the end of it, I just threw up my hands,” Assistant County Attorney Tony Ambrose said.

Monroe had been charged with four felonies, including possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and trafficking in cocaine, and two misdemeanors. Since then, he has been arrested at least three more times and was recently indicted in a case nearly identical to the one dismissed when the officer failed to appear.

In another example of failed police oversight, Detective Crystal Marlowe was cited by prosecutors 10 times for missing court but was never disciplined by the department. Nor was Marlowe's conduct even scrutinized by police until a prosecutor in the county attorney's office complained to a high-ranking department official last September.

Following that meeting, the department began an investigation into Marlowe's missed court appearances and a number of questionable arrests. The inquiry is ongoing.

As part of the department's new resolve to address court attendance, Robison said all of the prosecutors' reports eventually will be investigated for possible violations. He said that if the missing records can't be found, copies will be obtained from the county attorney's office.

Audits weren't conducted

Because the police department didn't conduct the daily court-attendance audits required by the new policy, commanding officers weren't informed of potential problems.

Responsibility for the audits had been given to the department's court-liaison officer, Sgt. David Mutchler, whose job included monitoring court attendance and passing the names of potential violators up the chain of command for additional review and possible discipline.

But Mutchler apparently did not understand that daily attendance audits were his responsibility, Robison said, so only incomplete tracking and reporting occurred, such as when officers told him they were going to miss court.

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Moreover, Mutchler faced a potential conflict of interest when he was a candidate last summer and fall for the presidency of the River City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 614, which represents more than 2,000 active and retired sworn and retired officers.

Mutchler, who won the FOP election last November, was replaced by Robison in February as the court liaison. Mutchler declined to comment.

Asked whether Mutchler's dual roles of FOP president and court liaison factored in his decision to replace him, Robison responded, “Not directly, no.” Robison said Mutchler is “a good police officer, but I can see the concern.”

Robison said he chose Lt. Danny Assef to be the court liaison because he had worked with him before and wanted a higher-ranking officer in the position.

“I would expect a different work product,” Robison said. “You raise the responsibility level, so there is a higher attention to detail.”

The police department still has no method to track which court cases have been dismissed, and why, much less assess them for possible officer misconduct.

Officers are supposed to fill out paperwork concerning dismissed cases and the reasons for it.

But Robison acknowledged that such self-reporting is imperfect at best, because officers whose unauthorized court absences or other misconduct caused cases to be dismissed would be reluctant to say so.

It wasn't until Feb. 25 — nine months after White's new policy took effect and also after the newspaper had requested documents showing the department's efforts to track dismissed cases — that police finally asked the state Administrative Office of the Courts about obtaining dismissed-case statistics.

Signs of improvement cited

Robison said that since mid-February, daily audits have been conducted and that prosecutors' reports now are being reviewed in a timely way.

As a result, he and others said, officers' absences in court have declined greatly. And disciplinary actions have also greatly increased.

In the first three months of this year, 25 officers have been sanctioned for missing court — six times as many as all of last year.

Jefferson District Judge Anne Haynie, who has been critical in the past of lax police court attendance, said she has noticed a “total night-and-day difference” in recent months.

“There has been a real sea change,” she said. “Officers have been very diligent.”